Novelty checks are a fun way to show your personality while paying your bills. Checks with designs on them have become very popular and often are competitively priced. Novelty check vendors are abundant and will often accept orders online or through the mail.

Teddy bear checks are an extremely popular option for teddy bear enthusiasts young and old. While largely regarded as a child's toy, teddy bears are also often collected by adults. Antique teddy bears are very collectible and valuable, as are designer bears that are intended for adult teddy bear enthusiasts. For over a century now, teddy bears have been a part of American culture. How, though, did what we now know as the teddy bear come to be?

Origins of the Teddy Bear

President Theodore Roosevelt was an avid big game hunter and continued to be so while he was in office. In 1902, while President Roosevelt was hunting in Mississippi, some members of the President's camp caught a young Louisiana Black Bear and presented it to the him. President Roosevelt refused to kill the lassoed animal because it would be unsportsmanlike to do so, and the animal was released.

Political cartoonist Clifford Barryman caught wind of the incident and made it the subject of his next cartoon and "Teddy's Bear" was born. Not long after the cartoon came out, a shop owner in Brooklyn started displaying stuffed bears in their display window. President Roosevelt agreed to let the shop owners call the bears Teddy's Bears.